It is common practice to extract small amounts of vitreous material from a person's eye in order to provide a sample of the material for examination or in order to remove material so that antibiotics or other drugs may be injected into the eye. Typically, any injection into the eye can result in excess pressure being generated and cause damage to the eye. Accordingly, it is desirable that a volume of vitreous material be removed from the eye prior to injecting an equal volume of drugs into the eyeball.
Various instruments have been developed for this purpose, most of which have been relatively complicated requiring large amounts of supporting equipment. U.S. Pat. No. 6,059,792 describes a sutureless vitrectomy tool that can be used to perform a vitrectomy procedure including removing all of the vitreous material from an eye. However, this device requires an operating room environment and electrical connections to a hand held instrument that utilizes a linear motor to repetitively drive a cutting tool within a 23 gauge stainless steel needle for removing vitreous from the eye. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,989,262 and 5,716,363 describe sutureless pars plana vitrectomy tools using electrically powered actuators.